And no doubt a fourth reason why people watch televised sports is that they often make great television. Carlton Fisk’s famous 1975 World Series homer, the American hockey victory over the Soviet Union team at the Lake Placid Olympics and the camera’s sad attention to Thurman Thomas in the last quarter of the 1994 Super Bowl.

Its focus on the individual miscues that had led to a fourth straight Buffalo Bills defeat, are only three examples of the wonder that can be sports on television.

But what, specifically,, makes an individual sporting event “good television?” As Channels writer Julie Talen wrote, “All sports are not created equal. The most popular sports on TV are those best served by the medium’s limitations.”

What she means is that even if there are 20 cameras and 40 microphones at an event, the viewer still receives one picture and one set of sounds.

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Together these must convey a sense of what is happening in the actual contest. Monday Night Football’s long­time director, Chet Forte, argued, “It’s impossible to blow a football game.

Football works as a flattened sport. Its rectangular field fits on the screen far more readily than, for example, golf’s far-flung woods and sand traps.

The football moves right or left on the screen and back again. Its limited repertoire kicks, passes, and run sets it apart from, say, baseball, where the range of possibilities for the ball and the players at any given moment is enormous.”

And CBS’s top football director, Sandy Grossman, says “The reason (the gridiron) is easier to cover is because every play is a separate story. There’s a beginning, middle, and an end, and then there’s 20 or 30 seconds to retell it or react to it.”

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There are, in other words, certain characteristics of the different sports that make them better dramatic and visual matches for television, and in doing so, render them more popular with audiences.

The camera, and therefore the fans’ attention, is repeatedly redirected to a specific starting point for each new play, serve, or pitch.

This is what CBS’s Grossman above called a “separate story.” Therefore, football and baseball are better than hockey and soccer in providing a discrete starting point.

Tension can be sustained and viewer interest maintained if something crucial can occur at any moment. Any pitch can result in a home run or a fine running catch by the center fielder. Any pass can produce a touchdown or an interception.

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In contrast, the first three quarters of a basketball game usually serve only to set up the last three minutes and much of soccer’s action happens at mid-field, yards and yards away from the goal (and a potential exciting save or game-changing score).

Baseball has innings, football has time-outs and quarters. Those covering and those watching the event can establish a rhythm that allows for the more-or-less natural insertion of commercials and visits to the refrigerator.

Soccer has continuous action, as doe’s hockey, which makes commercial insertion more complex. Cameras and viewers have to be able to follow the object of interest on the field and on the small screen, respectively. Basketballs and footballs are big while hockey pucks and golf balls are quite small.

Television is a visual medium; it lives by the pictures it offers its viewers. Baseball and football offer spectacle big, full, beautiful stadiums, lovely playing surfaces, the blimp, cheerleaders (football) and the bullpen (baseball).

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Golf presents the manicured scenery of country club settings and the occasional glimpse at windswept Scottish headlands. Tennis, by contrast, has a small rectangular court and bowling has a skinny lane of wood (though each has the beginning- middle-end story structure so desirable to directors).

Nothing adds to visual variety like physical action, people moving and competing. Basketball is ballet above the rim. In football there are incredible tests of strength and aggression.

Tennis demands action defined by precision and endurance. Fans follow players as well as teams and the camera is well versed in the close-up. Roone Arledge of ABC called this “sports as soap opera.”

Baseball gives us the tight shot of the pitcher’s anxiety as he holds the runners on first and third or zooms in on the concentration in the basketball player’s eyes as she shoots two from the charity stripe with the game on the line.

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In hockey it’s much more difficult to provide close- up, personal video images because the players wear helmets and skate at 30 miles an hour, but fans can still be attached to individual personalities, waiting for the grudge-induced fistfight on the ice.

And as the celebrity status of Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus, or the glamorous intensity of a John McEnroe, a Martina Navratilova, or a Jimmy Conners attest, even the more sedate sports create a cult-like status for their superstars.

Of course, television prefers sports with wide interest because it assures more viewers and ad revenue; but this is a plus for sports fans as well. Surely many fans watch games between teams they would not typically follow.

The outcome might affect their home-town favorites or they want to see that scrappy second baseman they’ve read so much about?